Headlines
As reported by The Hartford Courant, January 15, 2008.
UConn Administrative Changes Planned
To help the University of Connecticut compete for major research grants, President Michael J. Hogan is proposing an administrative reorganization designed to increase collaboration between the university's health center in Farmington and the Storrs campus.
Under the plan, the deans of the schools of medicine and dental medicine would report to Provost Peter Nicholls in Storrs and would become part of the council of deans. Currently the dean of the dental school reports to Hogan and to the dean of medicine, who also serves as executive vice president for health affairs at the health center.
The plan also calls for expanding the role of the vice provost for research and dean of the graduate school to go beyond UConn's Storrs and regional campuses to include the health center as well.
The plan coincides with the impending retirement of Peter Deckers, the dean of the medical school and vice president and director of the health center.
Hogan said the new organizational structure, commonplace at other universities, would encourage cross-college collaboration and reduce duplication, further strengthening the university's research position.
Hogan said he sees this as a step toward qualifying for major National Institutes of Health grants in medical science that link what is learned at the bedside to the lab and back again.
"Receiving one of these awards is an emblem of your standing as a research university," Hogan said. "If we don't, we're signaling that we are kind of a second-class research enterprise."